The marvelous English actor Stephen Fry (Oscar Wilde, Jeeves and Wooster, etc. etc. and the impending ITV series about a solicitor, Kingdom) has a new column for the Guardian Weekend all about his obsession with gadgets and things techie. The first column, “Welcome to dork talk“, sets the table for what is bound to be a run of highly entertaining — and knowledgeable — columns on thing that might well interest more than one reader of Slaw. Fry says:

…[W]hat kind of devices might I be discussing over the coming weeks? Including, but not confined to: mobile phones, smartphones, music players, media players, cameras, electronic books, satnavs, computers, peripherals, TVs, games machines and any digital device or grown-up toy that may take my fancy. And not necessarily all that grown-up, either.

I won’t be writing about hand-helds and hardware only, however. I have to confess that while gaming as such is not my first interest, and I don’t spend much time in World of Warcraft, Halo or Manhunt, I do have a Second Life existence (you’ll never find me, so don’t look. Lord, there’s a thought: “celebrity avatars exposed” – fair chills the blood). I have a secret presence on Facebook and a public one, too, which I don’t have the time to pay much attention to. So, yes, I’ll undoubtedly have a look at Web 2.0, social networking and other contentious and contemporary digital issues.

It appears, alas, that there’s no way to subscribe to this column via RSS. If anyone finds a way, please do let us know.

As a bonus, I’ve discovered from the column that Fry has a blog seemingly about his relationship with technology and which, because it’s powered by WordPress, does have an RSS feed.

Oh, and I would have said “nerd” rather than “dork.” What do you think?

Living in the UK, I would say that nerd is seen as an americanism, and dork is a much more English term for that type of person. This may ring more bells with the older generation, of which Stephen is one – having his 50th birthday celebrated on BBC4 recently with a weekend of entertainment featuring him in many roles over the years. And the Guardian readership would most likely identify better with a dork!!

But Ruth isn’t dork much more of a swat term for that sort of a bloke. Don’t we need some sort of cyber equivalent of anorak.

anorak n (1984) a boring, studious, or socially inept young person (caricatures as typically wearing an anorak); especially, one who pursues an unfashionable and solitary interest with obsessive dedication.

Actually, the AskOxford website gives both geek and nerd as having passed into BritSpeak.